Home›Resources› Current Newsletter › July 05 › Lead Conversion Is About Buying Not Selling, Right?

Prospects simply need to perceive that they are.

If you're selling, and the prospective customer perceives you as a salesperson with an agenda, your chances of successfully closing the sale may be greatly reduced. Many people are sales averse, and will resist your sales efforts if you approach them like they're a "sales opportunity," rather than an individual in need of a solution. Again, it is important that your sales process enables your prospective customers to feel empowered and in control, not victimized.

To help foster a favourable rapport with your perspective customers, you can position your efforts in many different ways. You are inquiring, or you are counseling, you are learning, you are advising, you are analysing, or you are conducting market research. You are NOT selling. This will not only benefit your prospective customers, but it will also help you shift your point of view, so that you can more effectively approach the sales process from a customer-centric perspective.

Another aspect of the control issue is that the prospective customer needs to feel that he or she is making the decision, independent of you, without having succumbed to pressure sales tactics. In order to buy, then, the prospective customer must sell it to himself or herself. You can assist them in coming to their conclusion to buy, but if you try to make it happen all by yourself you risk being perceived as pushy, and the prospective customer cannot then perceive himself or herself as in control; as freely buying.

Just as in marketing, where positioning is everything, so it is in selling. The sale is made or not made in the first few seconds or minutes. Just as in meeting a new acquaintance, where we form a first impression, when a salesperson first calls or meets a prospect, there is a first impression formed in the unconscious mind of the prospect.

The unconscious mind operates on a system of polarity, perceiving the world as either good or not good; safe or not safe, bad or not bad. The first impression, in the unconscious mind of the sales prospect, determines the outcome of the sales effort. The conscious mind then spends the rest of the time in the sales process rationalizing the decision already made in the prospect’s unconscious mind...buy or don’t buy. This unconscious mind’s decision, to buy or not buy, will probably have little or nothing to do with what you sell. It will have everything to do with your positioning language, your voice, your confidence level, your warmth (or lack of it), and your ability to create a perception of control being in the hands of the prospect.

Selling is about the buyer, it’s not about you. And, it’s not about your product or service. Selling is a psychodynamics human situation. If you think it’s about products, you lose. If you think it’s about how great a salesman or saleswoman you are, you lose. If you think it’s about anything other than the prospective buyer, and the emotions of the prospective buyer, you lose. But, if you make it about the buyer, anything is possible!

If you want to establish a truly effective "Sales Process" for your business, contact us.